This graphic traces a network of cortical neurons from a trillions of bytes’ worth of 3-D data. Some of the neurons are color-coded according to their activity patterns in the living brain. (Credit: Clay Reid, Allen Institute; Wei-Chung Lee, Harvard Medical School; Sam Ingersoll, graphic artist)
Scientists say they’ve analyzed trillions of bytes’ worth of mapping data from the brain of a mouse to trace the connections within a tangle of neurons that’s smaller than a pinhead.
“This is the culmination of a research program that began almost 10 years ago,” study co-author R. Clay Reid, senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, said in a news release. “Brain networks are too large and complex to understand piecemeal, so we used high-throughput techniques to collect huge data sets of brain activity and brain wiring.”
This map shows the U.S. Geological Survey’s forecast for natural and human-induced earthquakes in 2016. The colors denote the chance of damage, ranging from less than 1 percent to 12 percent. The graphic for the central and eastern U.S. combines the two types of earthquakes. The map for the western U.S. assumes that all of the earthquakes occur naturally. Click on the map for a larger version. (Credit: USGS)
For the first time, the U.S. Geological Survey is pinpointing the places where quakes induced by human activity as well as natural seismicity are most likely to occur this year.
The map released today dramatically raises the earthquake risk assessment for areas of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arkansas, primarily due to seismic activity triggered by injecting wastewater deep underground.
Wastewater injection is often associated with the oil and gas extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. However, the USGS says fracking fluid typically makes up less than 10 percent of the injected wastewater. Most of it is saltwater that’s brought up as a byproduct during the oil and gas production process. To avoid polluting freshwater sources, the undrinkable water is typically pumped deep underground over the course of years or decades..
“By including human-induced events, our assessment of earthquake hazards has significantly increased in parts of the U.S.,” Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, said in a news release.
A color-coded map shows how hot temperatures got on June 29, 2012, with the reddest region indicating temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A model based on Pacific sea surface temperatures could predict such a heat wave up to seven weeks in advance. (Credit: NWS Weather Prediction Center)
Meteorologists say they’ve found a pattern in Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures that could help authorities prepare for heat waves in the eastern United States up to 50 days in advance.
Now that the pattern has been found, forecasters will start keeping track of the heat wave indicators in May. But don’t expect the 50-day forecast to show up in the nightly weather report.
“Most seasonal predictions, including this one, are probabilistic rather than deterministic,” lead author Karen McKinnon, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, explained in an email. “For example, we can predict an increase in the odds in favor of having a hot day in the Eastern U.S. from about 1 in 6, to 1 in 2, at lead times of 40 days if the Pacific Extreme Pattern is particularly strong.”
She said the indicators are most likely to come into play during preparations for the peak of the summer.
“For example, city leaders could ensure they have sufficient cooling rooms for the elderly or those without air conditioning; farmers could alter their management tactics to prevent crop loss; businesses could be prepared for increased demand of air conditioners and fans; and utilities could ensure they have sufficient power options available to bring online quickly in case of a spike in demand,” she said.
The research was published today by Nature Geoscience. One of the authors, Andy Rhines, is a climate scientist at the University of Washington.
The International Space Station’s robotic arm reaches out to grapple Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo ship in a video view with an overlay of computer data. (Credit: NASA TV)
Orbital ATK’s Cygnus commercial cargo ship had a smooth link-up with the International Space Station on March 26, delivering about 7,500 pounds of supplies, equipment, experiments and high-tech gizmos. But a rocket glitch that cropped up while putting the Cygnus into orbit has led United Launch Alliance to postpone the next scheduled liftoff of its Atlas 5 rocket.
The good news is that the Atlas 5’s anomalous rocket engine performance on March 22 had no impact on Cygnus’ sendoff. The uncrewed capsule made its rendezvous right on time, and astronauts used the station’s robotic arm to bring it in for its berthing.
Over the next two months, crew members will unload Cygnus’ cargo – including a 3-D printer, a meteor-watching experiment and tons of more mundane items. Then they’ll fill it back up with trash and send it loose to burn up during atmospheric re-entry. During the descent, mission managers will use an experimental apparatus to set a fire inside the capsule and study how the flames spread.
Flirtey’s hexacopter hovers over Nevada during a drone delivery test. (Credit: Flirtey)
A startup named Flirtey says it’s executed the first FAA-approved urban drone delivery in the United States, in a test that could blaze a trail for Amazon and other companies that want to do the same thing.
The GPS-guided drop-off to an unoccupied house took place on March 10 in Hawthorne, Nev. The package of supplies, including bottled water, emergency food supply and a first-aid kit, was lowered by a rope to the house’s front porch from a hovering hexacopter. A drone pilot and several visual observers were on standby in case something went wrong, but they weren’t needed, the company said.
“Conducting the first drone delivery in an urban setting is a major achievement, taking us closer to the day that drones make regular deliveries to your front doorstep,” Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeny said today in a news release about the test.
Flirtey has already used drones to deliver textbooks in Australia and auto parts inNew Zealand, but its grand plan is to crack the market in the United States. That’s why it’s been participating in limited tests sanctioned by the Federal Aviation Administration at specified sites. Last July, Flirtey conducted a similar test for rural drone delivery in Virginia.
Hanson Robotics’ Sophia (left) represents the state of the art in “friendly” AI robots, while the AI robot Ava from “Ex Machina” (played by Alicia Vikander, at right) represents a sci-fi vision of where the robotics field could go. (Credit: CNBC / Hanson Robotics / A24 Films)
Can artificially intelligent robots be our friends? Our helpmates? Our companions? Roboticists and AI researchers are trying to make it so – and the first fruits of their labors are about to come onto the market. But there are already hints that the efforts will touch some of humanity’s hot buttons.
Take Hanson Robotics, for example: Its latest creation, Sophia, combines an AI chatbot with an expressive humanlike face. She can talk enthusiastically about helping humans in health care, education and customer service. But she can also go off script.
“Do you want to destroy humans? Please say no,” roboticist David Hanson, the company’s founder, asked Sophia during a CNBC interview at this month’s South By Southwest technology conference in Texas.
“OK, I will destroy humans,” it replied. “No, I take it back!” Hanson said with a laugh.
Closer to home, a Microsoft teen chatbot named Tay was hijacked by mischievous Twitter users and transformed into a foul-mouthed racist, less than 24 hours after it was released onto the Internet. Microsoft had to take Tay offline, delete the offending Tweets and try resetting its AI attitude.
Such problems shouldn’t be surprising to science fiction fans, who have been pummeled by robo-dystopias ranging from the classic 1927 film “Metropolis” to last year’s “Ex Machina.” But despite the challenges, scores of companies around the world are working on robots that are meant to have the smarts and the actuators necessary to interact with humans in everyday environments.
Majestic.com is working with Made In Space to have a 3-D visualization of global Internet connections turned into a plastic sculpture, using the 3-D printer that’s being sent to the International Space Station. The sculpture should look something like this. (Credit: Majestic)
The first objects to be created in orbit using the upgraded 3-D printer that’s on its way to the International Space Station are likely to be strictly utilitarian, but there’s fun stuff to come.
The Additive Manufacturing Facility, a 3-D printer designed for use in zero-G, was launched on Tuesday night along with more than 7,500 pounds’ worth of additional cargo aboard Orbital ATK’s uncrewed Cygnus cargo capsule. The bus-sized spacecraft, known as the S.S. Rick Husband, is due to rendezvous with the space station on Saturday.
This is actually the second 3-D printer to go into outer space. The first one was an experiment, built by a commercial venture called Made In Space.
This time around, Made In Space partnered with Lowe’s Innovation Labs to produce a more capable 3-D printer. The main idea is to provide a way to fabricate plastic tools and spare parts by following computerized instructions that are sent up from the ground.
Seattle billionaire Paul Allen discusses his Frontiers Group program to support cutting-edge bioscience during a briefing at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. (Credit: Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group)
Seattle billionaire Paul Allen added another venture to his philanthropic portfolio today with the creation of the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a $100 million program to support research on the frontiers of bioscience.
The effort aims to establish Allen Discovery Centers at research institutions around the world, and provide millions of dollars to Allen Distinguished Investigators for cutting-edge biological and medical research. Bioengineer Tom Skalak, the Frontiers Group’s founding executive director, said the support should “create entire new fields in some cases.”
Allen unveiled the program at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., amid endorsements from the presidents of the national academies of science, engineering and medicine. He said the goal of the Frontiers Group, which will be headquartered in Seattle, is to fund “out-of-the-box approaches at the very edges of knowledge.”
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket lifts off, sending Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo capsule into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (Credit: NASA)
Orbital ATK’s commercial Cygnus cargo capsule was lofted into orbit tonight atop an Atlas 5 rocket, carrying an upgraded 3-D printer, a gecko-type gripper, a fire-starting experiment and tons of other supplies to the International Space Station.
The launch vehicle made an on-time departure from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 11:05 p.m. ET (8:05 p.m. PT). If all goes according to plan, astronauts will grapple the uncrewed Cygnus spacecraft with the station’s robotic arm and pull it in to its berthing port on the Unity node on Saturday.
This will be Orbital ATK’s fourth delivery to the station under the terms of a $1.9 billion contract with NASA, and the second to make use of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5. Orbital ATK had to turn to the Atlas when its own Antares rocket blew up shortly after launch in October 2014, destroying a Cygnus shipment. A redesigned Antares is expected to make its debut later this spring.
A study conducted at Group Health Research Institute found that meditation can be as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy and medication for treating low back pain. (Credit: JAMA via YouTube)
Mindfulness meditation can give a boost to treatments for chronic low back pain for a wide spectrum of patients, a study conducted by Seattle’s Group Health Research Institute has found.
The patients were divided into three groups. The control group continued their usual treatment plan, including medications and physical therapy. The other two groups went through two-hour training sessions, once a week for eight weeks, in two different types of mental techniques for addressing stress and pain.
One technique is known as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, which has previously been used to treat back pain as well as other conditions such as depression. CBT helps patients reframe how they think about pain to manage it more successfully. It also helps them change behaviors that may contribute to pain.
The other technique is mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR. Practitioners are trained to observe, acknowledge and accept their thoughts and feelings, including their sensation of pain. The training also promotes body awareness through yoga.
The CBT and MBSR patients were allowed to receive other types of care independent of the study.
Group Health’s researchers found that the CBT and MBSR patients were more likely to experience at least a 30 percent improvement in function, as well as in their self-reported assessments of how much they were bothered by back pain.
